Colorado: Angel of the Rockies with Jessica Malaty Rivera
The Preamble
Sharon McMahon
4.9 • 15.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Sharon tells the heartfelt story of Clara Brown, the “Angel of the Rockies” to Jessica Malaty Rivera. Jessica is a friend and brilliant epidemiologist who may or may not have cried when she heard the touching details of Clara’s story. Sharon takes listeners back to the year 1800 when Clara Brown was born into slavery in Kentucky. When she was 56, Clara was granted her freedom, but her husband and children were abruptly sold off as slaves. With nowhere else to go, Clara set West for Colorado, travelling 700 miles on foot. In Colorado, Clara became a successful entrepreneur and gave away nearly all of her wealth to her community. This is the story of determination and success as well as compassion, family reunion and ultimate generosity. Listen to find out exactly why Clara is named the “Angel of the Rockies” and why Sharon and Jessica shed a few tears while recording this episode.
For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Yay you're here! Hello and welcome. I am chatting today with my friend |
| 0:06.4 | Jessica Malady Rivera. You've probably seen her all over the news networks, |
| 0:09.9 | you have probably seen her all over the internet. She is an infectious |
| 0:13.1 | disease epidemiologist. She has been a little bit busy. Perhaps you can guess why. But |
| 0:19.5 | guess what? We are not talking about COVID today. No, friends. No. It's time to talk about something else |
| 0:26.1 | with Jessica who is an incredibly intelligent human and knows so many things about so many things. |
| 0:32.8 | She's also very funny. |
| 0:35.7 | But this is a story called The Angel of the Rockies. |
| 0:40.2 | And we had to take a break because some dust flew in our eyeballs and we found ourselves tearing up. |
| 0:50.0 | I may, y'all put this on my resume I made Jessica Malady Rivera cry there you go it's on my |
| 0:56.8 | resume now I feel good about it enough chatting let's dive into this episode. I think you're going to find it |
| 1:04.5 | inspirational. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So |
| 1:09.5 | podcast. Yay! My friend Jessica Malady Rivera is here. How are you my friend? I'm doing well. Tell everybody what you do. So thank you for that kind intro. I am an infectious disease epidemiologist. I have my degree in |
| 1:24.8 | emerging infectious diseases and studied pandemics for many many years prior to |
| 1:29.2 | COVID-19, so this is a very surreal time for me. I also most recently worked as the science communication lead |
| 1:34.8 | for the COVID tracking project, |
| 1:35.9 | which was housed at the Atlantic, |
| 1:37.1 | and we provided real-time data for states and jurisdictions, |
| 1:41.6 | all 56 of them for cases, tests, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the pandemic. |
| 1:46.8 | You have that like doubt. You know what you do. Like this is my elevator speech, I've said it before I know how to describe my job. |
| 2:00.0 | What a year for everybody what a year year for you? When you were studying emerging infectious diseases, |
| 2:05.9 | did you ever think to yourself, someday there'll be a pandemic and I'll have to use this information? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sharon McMahon, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Sharon McMahon and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.